Exploring the Culture, Coasts, and Hidden Corners of Florida
The Florida Keys are best understood as a long, inhabited edge: an island chain stretched between Florida Bay, the Gulf, and the Atlantic, with the Overseas Highway linking coral islands, mangrove shorelines, old fishing settlements, public beaches, reef parks, and…
The Florida Keys are usually reduced to a narrow chain of famous stops: Key Largo diving, Islamorada sportfishing, Seven Mile Bridge views, and the dense historic core of Key West. That shorthand misses the region’s quieter geography. The Conch Republic…
The Florida Keys make the most sense when read from north to south, mile marker by mile marker, as a long coral-and-limestone chain tied together by U.S. 1, the Overseas Highway. That road is more than transportation. It is the…
The Florida Panhandle is often reduced to its beaches, but the region makes the most sense as a long band of linked landscapes. West to east, the coast runs from Pensacola Bay and Gulf Islands National Seashore through Choctawhatchee Bay,…
The Florida Panhandle is often reduced to a few familiar names: Pensacola Beach, Destin, Panama City Beach, perhaps Apalachicola. The region is larger, more varied, and more finely grained than that shorthand allows. Between Perdido Key and the Big Bend…
Introduction The Florida Panhandle is not a single coastline with a few beach towns attached. It is a long, shifting region shaped by military history, deepwater bays, barrier islands, blackwater rivers, pine flatwoods, high river bluffs, state forests, and one…
Florida’s Big Bend is not a beach strip and not simply a stretch of rural North Florida. It is a broad transition zone where the peninsula loosens into salt marsh, oyster bars, blackwater rivers, limestone springs, pine flatwoods, and hardwood…
The Shape of the Big Bend Florida’s Big Bend is defined less by resort frontage than by interruption: broad estuaries, shallow bays, blackwater rivers, limestone springs, and long tracts of public land that keep the coast from becoming continuous development.…
Introduction Florida’s Big Bend is not a beach belt in the usual sense. From the mouth of the Suwannee River west toward Apalachicola Bay, the coastline bends through salt marsh, oyster bars, tidal creeks, and low islands rather than long…
Paradise Coast is often reduced to a short list of beach names, but the region makes more sense when read as a connected landscape. Naples, Marco Island, the western edge of Collier County, and the approaches to Everglades City form…